In Judith A. McGaw’s writing she explains that even though we had an Industrial Revolution the tools that were being used were still archaic at best.  The frontier was not as advanced as we are led to believe it was.  I found it interesting that not all frontiersman owned guns, while movies and shows make it look like all people during this time had guns.  I wonder how they were able to look after their land without a weapon, or did they make their own too?  I also understand that each area, not just a young America, but the world in general had different types of technology for different actions.  --Pam Petzold

In Judith A. McGaw’s writing she explains that even though we had an Industrial Revolution the tools that were being used were still archaic at best.  The frontier was not as advanced as we are led to believe it was.  I found it interesting that not all frontiersman owned guns, while movies and shows make it look like all people during this time had guns.  I wonder how they were able to look after their land without a weapon, or did they make their own too?  I also understand that each area, not just a young America, but the world in general had different types of technology for different actions.  --Pam Petzold

McGaw’s ideas about our image of colonial America’s technology is distorted was extremely interesting.  While reading her findings and her ideas, I also began to think about technologies we have today whose images have been distorted or made into something bigger than it is.  McGaw’s research “shows that farmers’ possessions reveals that there was no standard array of implements farmers and farm wives owned or needed to own,” (29).  The idea that really stood out to me was the idea of necessity.  Just because a “new” piece of technology was produced doesn’t mean that if fit the lifestyles or the necessities of everyone.  Her research with the counties of Pennsylvania and New Jersey mentions people of different ethnicities and different ways of doing things.  During colonial America people owned new technologies based on their needs and way of living.  Today we buy the latest technology simply because we want it and feel we have to have it.  The iPad for example, looks sweet and awesome, but what is its purpose exactly?  Do people in today’s society REALLY NEED it?

McGaw’s ideas about our image of colonial America’s technology is distorted was extremely interesting.  While reading her findings and her ideas, I also began to think about technologies we have today whose images have been distorted or made into something bigger than it is.  McGaw’s research “shows that farmers’ possessions reveals that there was no standard array of implements farmers and farm wives owned or needed to own,” (29).  The idea that really stood out to me was the idea of necessity.  Just because a “new” piece of technology was produced doesn’t mean that if fit the lifestyles or the necessities of everyone.  Her research with the counties of Pennsylvania and New Jersey mentions people of different ethnicities and different ways of doing things.  '''During colonial America people owned new technologies based on their needs and way of living.  Today we buy the latest technology simply because we want it and feel we have to have it.  The iPad for example, looks sweet and awesome, but what is its purpose exactly?  Do people in today’s society REALLY NEED it?'''~Mike Roche

~Mike Roche